Research Guides

JAZZ RESEARCH GUIDE
to the University of Oregon's MUSIC SERVICES DEPARTMENT

INTRODUCTION

The following is a guide for doing jazz research in the University of Oregon's Knight Library. It lists the important bibliographies, discographies, encyclopedias and dictionaries of jazz, and the ways to find books, magazine articles, and biographical information on jazz and its performers. One area of research not listed in this guide is our Special Collections Department, which houses original manuscripts (including scores and letters from Red Nichols, among others.) Because this requires special paging by the department, you should make an appointment with the librarians in Special Collections (on the old second floor) to do research there.

A SEARCH PATH FOR DOING RESEARCH ON
JAZZ & JAZZ MUSICIANS

1. Take a tour of the Library to familiarize yourself with the locations of items.

3. Familiarize yourself with this packet for sources about jazz.

If there are no books about your person, consider under which larger heading your person might be listed, and use those subject headings in the UO Library's Catalog. [For instance, a book about bebop may include a section on Charlie Parker, using the subject heading such as Bebop in the Library's catalog.]

You might also check the names of the bands the person played in as subject headings-we may have books about that band!

5. Check the author section of the UO Library's web catalog to see if we have any books by that musician, or any recordings or video cassettes of his/her works.

Check to see if we have any of the books you found listed in step number 2.Note: Be sure to check the Library's catalog for a complete listing of our holdings.

Go through your chosen indexes under the musician's name to see if there are any articles listed.

Consult the UO Library's Catalog under the Journal Title of the periodical to see which magazines/periodicals we own.

When you find a journal listed, click on the FindText button to help discover if we have an online version of that journal.

7. If you have given yourself enough time, request any articles and books you didn't find in this library that were listed in bibliographies from our Interlibrary Loan Department.

Before you use the following forms, check SUMMIT to see if any libraries in this region own the items you want.
If they do, you can request it right on SUMMIT-and you will receive the item in three working days!

If SUMMIT doesn't have the item, try WorldCat, which connects you to over 20,000 libraries in the world, and provides Interlibrary loan service right on line.

If nobody seems to own what you are looking for, checkout the Interlibrary Loan Department of the library for forms and information on requesting items not in our Library.

INDEXES TO JAZZ ARTICLES

[Usually, the latest 10 years of each index are located on the Music Reference index tables; older years are in the Music Reference stacks by call number.]
(Note: an asterisk (*) by a term means that that term is the most useful one under which to search.)

The Most Important Indexes:

The Music Index
(1949 - 2001 in paper; on the web from 1979)
[MUSIC REF. INDEX TABLE ML 118 .M 84 + on the web through the Articles, Databases & Indexes section.
Indexes music journals and articles about music in scholarly and popular journals.Look under these headings: Jazz*; Blues; Afro- Americans and Jazz; College Universities- Jazz; Popular Music; Schools-Jazz; Jazz-Analysis; Jazz; Anecdotes, Facetiae, Satire; and under the names of in Music Reference individual performers, composers, arrangers, and groups.
For a guide to using the Music Index in paper form, go to http://library.uoregon.edu/music/researchguides/musindguide.html

RILM Abstracts of Musical Literature
(1967 - present)
[MUSIC REF. INDEX TABLE ML 118 .R4 & on the web through Articles, Databases & Indexes]
Indexes books, festschrift, dissertations, and scholarly journals. Also includes an abstract of each item.
Beware: many of the articles are in languages other than English!Look under this section in the paper index: Ethnomusicology sections: #39: Jazz, Pop, and Rock.

Other Useful Indexes:

Academic Search Premier
A full-text database to coverage of many resources,especially in current news, business and company information, government and legal information, with some online music sources.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

Newspaper Source
An online source that indexes thirteen major newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, as well as many international newspapers.

The Register Guard Index
For doing research on local jazz artists(among other topics), this source indexes the Register Guard (Eugene's paper) back to 1963, as well as the Eugene Weekly.

JAZZ JOURNALS & MAGAZINES:

Look through the following journals & magazines to see if there are any articles about your topic. Most of these are indexed in the Music Index, RILM, or the Academic Search Premier.

Annual review of jazz studies.
Published under the auspices of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies
[MUSIC ML 3561 .J3 A5]

Hitchcock, H. Wiley & Sadie, Stanley.The New Grove Dictionary of American Music.
(Has a 30 p. historical survey of jazz, with a wonderful bibliography, as well as many separate entries for jazz musicians.)
[MUSIC REF. ML 101 .U6 N48 1986]

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
(From the same publishers as the above-with more in-depth articles, and more musicians covered than the American Grove.
[MUSIC REF. ML 102 .J3 N48 2001]

The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians 2d ed.
The on-line dictionary/encyclopedia for music and musicians. While the majority of the articles are on classical musicians & opera, the on-line version includes the New Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz.